Staff Communication System

Situation
Located in Buffalo, NY, is a regional center for trauma, burn, rehabilitation and cardiac care, which is also a major teaching facility for the University at Buffalo. The primary medical center has 550 inpatient beds and 156 skilled nursing beds and there are 40 outpatient specialty care clinics throughout western New York. The primary medical center has a large staff of doctors and nurses and the executive team was interested in improving communication to help build greater awareness of scheduling changes, HR reminders and medical conferences. It was determined that digital signage technology, and its ability to get noticed, was an effective means of communicating with their large, mobile staff.

Solution
Our client studied their communication needs and decided one channel of content was required at their primary center, although, due to the physical size of the facility a number of displays would be required at strategic locations where the staff would notice them. This requirement meant only one media player PC had to be utilized because the output signal could be split to various displays. One SceneStudio media player was placed in the IT closet and Extron video distribution equipment using Cat 5e cable was employed to carry the video and audio signal at distances approaching 800 feet.

The medical center team determined the best locations to deploy output displays was the primary staff entrance, staff locker rooms and a cafeteria. A LG 50” display was placed at the entrance and three of them in the cafeteria. In each locker room a Viewsonic 26” display was used.

Our client realized that any new communication tool could loose its novelty over time so they took the important step to alternate weather, sports and news feeds from AccuWeather.com with their core messages. The AccuWeather.com brand is trusted and recognizable and the constantly changing nature of the content helps drive the staff’s attention to the displays. The medical center also had the foresight to add images from company events from time-to-time, which is entertaining content the staff wants to see while building bonds between the staff.

Benefits
Our client has improved the ability to get important messages noticed by their large, mobile staff of doctors and nurses. The messages being communicated are important because the various events and conferences that are announced provide the ability to educate the staff, helping our customer to continually deliver excellence in patient care and customer service.

“Effectively communicating with such a large team is difficult. The SceneStudio solution makes it easy for us to reach everyone, every day.”